This is looking really cool! I like look_dev_05. The way the vegetation cuts off abruptly seems like it should look unrealistic, but it doesn't (to my eye). It actually looks quite plausible in a "man vs. nature" kind of way. It also has an interesting, potentially political element to in that respect, though I realize that may not be intended or necessarily desirable. But it does make the statement *to me* that the road kind of creates the desolation on one side, kind of the barrier between wild nature and domesticated/used/abused land.

Thankyou And yes there is supposed to be a political/philosophical element to the image. Quite what that is I will leave up to the viewer.

I've had this sort of mini story running round my mind since I started this of an old man telling several generations of kids that:

... the ol road was always here, since time gone. Sometimes some men come to fix a hole but mostly they don't. No one really has knowing of who made it, or for why. But mark I, we stay on our side and we hope they stay on theirs.

Something like that

I'm doing a large scale render now 1600 x 900 to check the detail is going to "pop". I'll post later.

Slight change of tack here, trying out a more overcast look. Actually I was going for a dark brooding Mordor feel but that didn't work out. It's going to be another of those interminable ones where I'm ever so slightly changing cloud values and sunlight direction till I can get it EXACTLY right. So I may stick with a simpler atmosphere.

The question of the day however is. Putting the Buffalo skull in, is this a tacky and naff move or is it appealing to archetypal imagery?

As soon as I got a section of nodes quite alright I ctrl-X them and put them (ctrl-V) inside some node (mostly surface shader). Cleans up the mess a bit.

I will do this as soon as I get to a final stage with the general layout (soon hopefully) but there is such a lot of interactive masking going on, I still don't know everything I need access easily to. So for now it stays

I am curious how this develops once you start tuning it for photo real. One thing I noticed: you seem to be biased towards exposing the scene for the sky, as the ground is relatively dark. Intentional?

Thankyou:)No it's not intentional, at least not for the moment. I've nor really started on the sky and atmosphere. I'd certainly like the vegetation to be less dark, more luminous. My working method is to develop different parts of the scene separately but nonetheless throw in any ideas I have along the way, partly to break the monotony but also to see if it sparks any new new inspiration. So we'll see. Richard